Tuesday 16 August 2016

Celebrating National Day with RUM

During National Day week, a fabulous group of visitors explored Ubin mangroves with the Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M.) Initiative!
This is the second free mangrove walk by the RUMblers, and we hope to do this monthly. Other exciting developments: we did our first mangrove mapping, and pamphlets explaining RUM in three languages have been created!


On 14 Aug, RUM Research Assistants Zheng Zhangxin and Ong Wei Bin led by Prof Dan Friess did the first mangrove mapping at a RUM site! Thanks to support from Joseph Lin from NParks and Mohammad Juhari for documenting our work as usual.
Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M.) Initiative practicing mapping mangroves
We also met up with Phillip Lim and Ah Yong who are kindly helping to explain RUM to the Chinese speaking villagers and shopkeepers. While Mohammad Juhari kindly agreed to help explain to the Malay-speaking villagers. To help them, we have prepared RUM pamphlets in English, Chinese and Malay. Thanks for the Chinese translations to Toh Chay Hoon, Heng Pei Yan and Jonathan Tan; and for the Malay translations to Mohammad Juhari. The pamphlets are on the right side-bar of this blog for your free download.
Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M.) Initiative field trip

Later in the afternoon, about 30 people joined the leisurely mangrove walk where RUMblers shared about the an exciting ground-up community effort to give Mother Nature a hand in restoring mangroves at abandoned aquaculture ponds on Pulau Ubin. By using the Ecological Mangrove Restoration method, mangroves will be naturally restored at abandoned aquaculture ponds on Pulau Ubin. Here's Prof Dan Friess sharing about mangrove trees and their special strengths and needs.
Free mangrove walk with Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M.) Initiative
We saw amazing mangrove creatures such as several monitor lizards that look like they were quarreling over a female.
Free mangrove walk with Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M.) Initiative
A sharp eyed visitor spotted a beautiful Oriental whip snake.
Photo by Victor Toh on facebook.
Everyone loves durians! And without mangroves, we would have no durians!
Free mangrove walk with Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M.) Initiative
In July, about 30 people also came for a similar walk.
Free mangrove walk with Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M.) Initiative
During that walk, we also saw a Paradise Tree snake!
Free mangrove walk with Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M.) Initiative
Thanks also to Uncle Lim of No. 42 Pulau Ubin for graciously allowing us to use his shop for the discussions before and after the walk.
Photo by Mohammad Juhari.
And thanks to all the great visitors, RUMblers and the wonderful friends making these walks possible. About 30 people joined each walk.

Free monthly mangrove RUM walks at Pulau Ubin

We are hoping to do this free mangrove walk every month to share about RUM and Ubin's mangroves. Join the RUM facebook group for the latest updates.

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